


Can't Get Warm

by kadollan



Category: Captain America, Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: Cold, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-07
Updated: 2012-11-07
Packaged: 2017-11-18 03:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/556610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kadollan/pseuds/kadollan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky wakes up cold on a table in a German camp, and he can't get warm.</p>
<p>Events in <i>Captain America: The First Avenger</i> from Bucky's POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't Get Warm

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my betas [CyberMathWitch](http://archiveofourown.org/users/CyberMathWitch) and [Cosmosatyrus](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmosatyrus). You are both lovely, and I adore you beyond reason.
> 
> Any remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
> I've had a lot of feelings about Bucky Barnes ever since I first saw _Captain America_.

Before, Bucky always saw himself as Steve’s protector. Steve would get himself into fights and then Bucky’d be there to get him back out again. Steve was his responsibility. And it wasn’t like Steve never gave anything back, but if there was a balance of power, it was shifted towards Bucky and they both knew it. He was the strong one, the one who could talk to girls, the one who was _capable_ , and really, he liked it that way.

***

It all changed after he was taken by the Germans. He doesn’t remember much about what happened while he was there - just being cold and waking up on a table, and a guy standing over him who says he’s Steve.

“I thought you were dead!” That’s Steve’s voice for sure, but he thinks he might be hallucinating. (He’d seen Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich earlier talking about baking a cake. He’s pretty sure that hadn’t really happened either.) Anyway, he knows it can’t be real, because this guy is probably twice Steve’s height.

He wonders if he’s completely lost his mind and maybe now his imagination is making up scenarios where Steve comes to save him just like he always did for Steve back in the day.

Then the guy helps him off the table.

“Can you walk?” it’s Steve’s voice, and damned if it isn’t Steve’s face too.

“I thought you were smaller.” He really is out of it. “What happened to you?”

“I joined the army.” Like that is any sort of explanation. Bucky’s light-headed and everything hurts but he just keeps moving because recently liberated prisoner of war status or no, damned if he’s letting on that he can’t keep up with Steve.

Steve explains about Erskine and Rebirth as they run. “Did it hurt?” Bucky remembers a face leaning down over him and then the world exploding with pain.

“A little.”

“Is it permanent?”

“So far!”

Then there’s no more time to talk because they are getting the hell out of Dodge while everything starts blowing up all around them.

And then Schmidt takes off his face — and after that things start to get a little weird. “You don’t have one of _those_ do you?” Bucky isn’t sure that being turned into a monster is a fair exchange for curing asthma — he doesn’t care how tall Steve’s gotten.

Steve shakes his head, and they start running again, and oh good, this time there’s stairs.

And if Steve really thinks for a second that after all this that Bucky would just leave and let him die, then this new Steve is every bit as dumb as he is tall. “Maybe there’s a rope or something!”

“Just go!”

“NO! Not without you!” he shouts and then he shouts again when Steve makes that jump because damned if it was even possible that Steve could jump so far.

Bucky’s pretty sure he’s about to wake up still strapped to that damn table and then he’ll just be _mad_ about it.

But then he never does wake up, because apparently he already is awake and this is all really happening.

***

It takes some getting used to, this new world where Steve is a tall, handsome hero and the dames ignore him in favor of his friend.

“I’m invisible. I’m turning into you and it’s a horrible dream.” Bucky is mostly kidding when he says this.

It feels petty and a little mean, and it’s not like he begrudges Steve his new popularity, his strength, or hell even his health. Of course he doesn’t. But there was a time when Bucky was his only friend, and if Steve needed something it was up to Bucky to help him get it. And now maybe Steve doesn’t really need him anymore.

Steve claps him on the shoulder and tells him not to take it so hard. “Maybe she’s got a friend.”

Ha ha.

***

Bucky has bad dreams. He goes to see Father Ryan, the chaplain attached to the 107th. Father says its normal for a guy that’s been through what he has. He’s not giving away any confidences (the confessional being sacred even if it’s a ragtag group of Presbyterians, Methodists and one Jew that the Good Lord has seen fit to lead him to minister to) but he lets Bucky know that he’s not the only soldier here kept up at night by what he’s seen.

***

Bucky hates himself just a little because his pal has everything he ever wanted and Bucky can’t entirely be happy for him. And he knows damn good and well that just because Steve is _more_ than he ever used to be that doesn’t make him, Bucky, any _less_.

But it’s a little hard.

***

When Steve starts talking about putting together a team, Bucky knows he wants in. He’s had some time to think about what’s changed, to get to know this new Steve. But he means it when he says that he’s in it to follow the little guy from Brooklyn, not that Captain America fella.

Bucky realizes that he’s been following Steve all his life, he just thought it was the other way around.

***

Some nights after a really bad dream he wakes up shivering cold and he thinks he might never get warm again.

***

He doesn’t know if it was just time for the tide to change or if Steve really does make all the difference, but for the first time since he came over it seems like they might have a shot at winning this war. Not every mission goes like clockwork of course, and he’s still seeing men he knows dying all around him. Hydra’s casualties are far higher, though.

They’ve got them on the ropes.

***

He knows that Dr. Zola was at the Hydra base with Schmidt, and when Steve shows him the grainy photograph of the German scientist he shivers. He doesn’t really remember, but he figures he must have seen Zola while he was a prisoner.

The night before the train mission is pretty rough. It’s snowing and they’re living in tents for God’s sake and he just cannot get warm.

By the time the sun comes up Bucky shakes off the dream and he’s ready to follow Steve into hell if that’s where the mission takes them.

***

Getting onto the train is surprisingly easy. He makes a joke about Coney Island, partly to set the boys at ease, and maybe a little bit because it makes him feel better to remember a time when he was always sure of himself.

It doesn’t take long before things start to go wrong. They adapt, just like they always do, because no plan is ever executed the way it’s written out by the generals in Command.

He gets separated from Steve and he doesn’t like it — likes it even less when he starts getting shot at.

He’s doing all right, holding his own, but a man’s only got so many rounds he can fire before he runs out. By then Steve’s back and tosses him another gun.

“I had him on the ropes.”

“I know you did.”

***

Steve’s shield surprises him because of how little it weighs. He almost over-balances because he tries to pick it up with too much force. It occurs to him that he’d make a lousy replacement Captain America.

Hydra’s weapons are about the only thing that can wipe Steve out and Bucky isn’t going to let that happen.

***

The force of the cannon blast throws him, and it’s pure dumb luck that he manages to grab the side of the train as he flies past.

Steve is right there, shouting at him to hang on.

He reaches, but the support bar he’s hanging on to is slipping.

“Grab my hand!” He tries to but it’s too far and he just can’t reach.

“NO!” He’s not sure which one of them yells it.

He’s falling.

***

The world is nothing but ice and blood and pain.

***

He wakes up cold and strapped to a table and he has a moment to think “God dammit it was just a dream after all,” before he slides back under.


End file.
